Audio 5:57
White paper pitch begins

Lexi MetherellUpdated
Mon 29 Oct 2012, 1:35 PM AEDT

The Federal Government has begun selling its Asian Century White Paper, saying it will help prepare Australia for the reorientation of the world's middle class to the region. The Opposition says the plan is heavy on rhetoric and light on detail, and it questions how the Government will fund its goals. Labor, meanwhile, is enjoying a rise in the polls, while its primary vote is still below the Coalition's, the parties are neck and neck on a two-party preferred basis.

Transcript

ELEANOR HALL: The Prime Minister has been leading the charge selling the Government's Asian Century White Paper this morning.

Julia Gillard says it is crucial to seizing the opportunities that are offered by the region's growing wealth.

But the Coalition Leader says the paper is heavy on rhetoric but light on detail and how to fund the plan, as Lexi Metherell reports.

(Student speaking Mandarin)

LEXI METHERELL: This is what the Government wants more of.

(Student speaking Mandarin)

PETER GARRETT: Aidan thankyou so much for welcoming me in Mandarin.

LEXI METHERELL: While the School Education Minister Peter Garrett was deployed to a Canberra school to sell the white paper, the Prime Minister took to the airwaves, explaining that Australia has to be more than just a quarry to Asia as it becomes home to most of the world's middle class.

JULA GILLARD: Asia has been saying to Australia we want your raw commodities, it's feeding our urbanisation, sell us those raw commodities. Now we've got to be ready for what Asia will want next when Asia is the region of the world with more middle class people than anywhere else, where 2 million people are connecting to the internet every week, where people will want, you know, all of the things that you and I want, you know, great food, good wine, holidays in interesting places.

LEXI METHERELL: It's long been acknowledged that Australian students need to be more Asia-literate.

Julia Gillard wants to breathe new life into that goal and says it will be a central part of the Government's education overhaul.

JULA GILLARD: We have a problem with the study of Asian languages now and what we're going to do is to take a whole of school system approach. I think this has been part of the problem, that studying Asian languages has been the top up, it's been the extra program that you load on top of what schools do. We are going to do this differently.

JULIE BISHOP: It is long on rhetoric and short on substance, it doesn't detail what Australia needs to do to reach these goals. And at this stage it's a missed opportunity, there's no commitment to new funding, no detailed strategic plan of how to achieve the goals.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: This Government has a paper with 25 ideas, the Prime Minister says she endorses them all. But where is the meat on the bones of this idea?

LEXI METHERELL: The Government's released the ambitious plan at the same time as it's struggling to achieve a surplus - a point seized on by the Opposition's Christopher Pyne.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: The Government has spent the money that they were left by the Howard legacy, they have a deficit and a debt you can't jump over and yet again they're trying to distract people with the idea that they will implement the Asian white paper.

LEXI METHERELL: The Greens Leader Christine Milne says there's a discrepancy between the goals of the white paper and the Government's recent cuts to research grants.

CHRISTINE MILNE: So at the one time we're saying let's show Asia what we can offer them in terms of services, expertise and capacity building. We are demonstrating that we are totally focused on digging up, cutting down, shipping away, spending infrastructure dollars on coal railways, and not in the education, research and training sector that we think is going to position ourselves for a competitive future.

LEXI METHERELL: But Craig Emerson, who now adds Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Asian Century Policy to his title, says the Government is making room in the budget to fund the white paper's aims.

CRAIG EMERSON: We're making the decisions to create that sort of space, for example, the decisions that we've made to apply means testing or stricter means testing to various benefits are equivalent to 2 per cent of GDP or a saving of $50 billion by the end of this decade.

So we are making room.

LEXI METHERELL: The paper doesn't have the wholehearted support of all in the Labor caucus though - like Senator Doug Cameron.

DOUG CAMERON: I think there needs to be an approach that actually gets the caucus involved in this white paper. I can't think of anything worse that doing a free trade agreement with Colombia.

LEXI METHERELL: No, Senator Cameron hasn't misplaced Colombia in Asia. He's referring to the white paper's idea that Australia will be a quote "connecting rod" between Asia and South America when it comes to negotiating free trade deals.

DOUG CAMERON: Where trade unionists are hunted down, where they are beaten up, where they are maimed, where they are killed on an almost daily basis. I can't understand why we would be promoting a free trade agreement with Colombia.

LEXI METHERELL: The white paper coincides with a lift in the polls for the Government. Newspoll shows the ALP's primary vote has risen and on a two party preferred basis, the parties are neck and neck. The Government's gained four points and the Coalition has lost four.

Labor's Doug Cameron says the Coalition's paying a price for its political strategy.

DOUG CAMERON: The Australian public, as I have said on numerous occasions, are really now wise to the Coalition. They don't accept the lies, the fear campaigns, the negativity that is just pouring out of the Coalition every day.

LEXI METHERELL: The numbers are a good sign for Julia Gillard, helping quell talk of leadership murmurings, and Craig Emerson has used the poll to highlight her resilience to Opposition attacks.

CRAIG EMERSON: They've thrown the kitchen sink, the bathroom vanity and carport at Prime Minister and here she is, still standing.

LEXI METHERELL: The Coalition says it's their leader who's been the target of the kitchen sink.

Christopher Pyne.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: The last two months the Government has thrown everything at Tony Abbott in a vicious personal smear campaign.

LEXI METHERELL: And the Opposition is comforting itself with the result of recent elections.

Julie Bishop.

JULIE BISHOP: I think the lesson from all of the recent state and territory polls is that when people get the opportunity to vote, there is a swing to the Coalition.